Proseminar: Contemporary Rhetorical Studies

Seminar in Rhetorical Theory: Aristotle, Arendt, Agamben.

This class will focus on the uptake of Aristotle's History of Animals and Politics into Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition and Between Past and Future and of both into Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer, The State of Exception, and The Open. Among the issues raised are: humans and animals; the nature of the political, the social, and civil society; the roles of discourse (logos), rhetoric, and philosophy in constituting the political; barbarism, slavery, commerce, and freedom; community and sovereignty; mere life and statelessness; private and public spheres, including the politics of sexuality and gender; ancients, moderns, and post-moderns; and the possibility or impossibility of new beginnings, especially after the Holocaust.

In addition to these primary texts, seminar members will read, make written reports on, and collectively discuss, some (abridged) texts (on Icon) by writers who mediate between the principal texts: Hobbes, Hegel, Schmitt, Heidegger, Blanchot, Nancy, Foucault, and Levinas. There will be seminar paper. These will be discussed at the end of the semester.